It has been the practice in the prior art to stamp and form electrical contacts or terminals from a continuous strip of metal. The contacts at first were individually assembled to a printed circuit board and then soldered in place. The disadvantage of such a technique involved a requirement for hand labor to sort the contacts from one another, to assemble the contacts in desired alignment within the board, and to straighten the contacts in their final desired positions after soldering the contacts in place. Because hand labor is costly, there has been considerable effort directed toward reducing the amount of hand labor required for assembly of contacts to a printed circuit board. One of the first improvements to result from such effort resided in locating the terminals serially along a common carrier strip which was formed integral with the terminals during the stamping and forming process. This permitted the carrier strip to be fed into an insertion machine which individually severed a terminal from the strip and forcibly inserted it into a printed circuit board. The prior art further evolved into a technique whereby a plurality of electrical terminals along a common carrier strip were located within a cob-type tool which aligned the plurality of terminals for simultaneous insertion within corresponding locations in a circuit board. Using this technique, insertion of a larger number of terminals were simultaneously inserted, the common carrier strip served to align the terminals while the terminals were soldered in place within the printed circuit board. Subsequently, the carrier strip was removed from the terminals, leaving the terminals individually located within the printed circuit board.
Another version of the above techniques is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,207 wherein a plurality of terminals, which extend transversely from a common carrier strip, has a body of insulating material molded transversely across the contacts. This molding is done using an intermittent molding process which provides individual housings.
Another prior art connector is the AMPLIFLEX Surface-To-Surface Connector sold by AMP Incorporated. The AMPLIFLEX connector is a thin flexible polyimide film on which individual parallel lines of etched cooper circuitry plated with gold over nickel is wrapped around a soft, non-conducting silicone rubber core. The core is formulated to resist permanent set under long term compression. When the connector is compressed between two flat planes, the plated circuit lines interconnect circuit pads on each plane. The resiliency of the connector core accommodates irregular and warped surfaces.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,245,876 discloses a continuous strip of electrical terminals which is formed by stamping rectangular openings in a strip of metal. A strip of dielectric material is then adhered to the metal strips, after which the metal strips are formed into electrical terminals of a selected configuration. Discrete lengths of the formed terminals in strip form are held together as separate terminals via the dielectric material which can be severed from the continuous strip for specified uses.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,908 discloses a method of producing a plurality of identical electrical terminals from a metal strip having the desired spring and conductive characteristics. At least one row of rectangular openings is stamped in the metal strip. The rectangular openings are positioned such that the longitudinal axis of the openings are essentially perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the metal strip. After the openings have been stamped, a web of insulation material is molded onto the strip of metal in alignment with each row of openings.